The Bible denies that it is sufficient as the complete rule of faith. Paul says that much Christian teaching is to be found in the tradition which is handed down by word of mouth (2 Tim. 2:2). He instructs us to "stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter" (2 Thess. 2:15).

You are, of course, misrepresenting those passages badly. Paul doesn't say, and Scripture doesn't say, that anything we need to know is outside the Canon and would always be outside the Canon. Remember that when Paul wrote the Gospels weren't written yet, but now they have been written (a rather significant difference).

After the resurrection, Jesus offered His own wounds as proof it was indeed He.

If you say Jesus' wounds went with him to heaven then are you saying the paraplegic will continue to have to use a wheelchair in heaven for lack of missing limbs? Those who died in fire will walk around with dripping flesh? Lepers will carry leprosy-scarred skin with them?

146
posted on 12/06/2006 10:44:04 PM PST
by FreedomCalls
(It's the "Statue of Liberty," not the "Statue of Security.")

According to tradition, the Apostle Luke got the story of the Nativity from Mary, herself. Is it out of the question to assume that he and some of the other Apostles may have witnessed Mary's Assumption and told the followers of Jesus about it? If it's not in the Bible, that wouldn't be unusual, after all, the Gospels are the story of Jesus's Incarnation, His public life of ministry, His Crucifixion, and His Resurrection. The letters from Paul, Peter and the other apostles to the new Christian communties were exhortations to live as Jesus had taught.

The New Testament is not Mary's story. That's why it doesn't include stories of what she did when she left Jerusalem, after Jesus's Ascension. We know Jesus placed her in the care of the youngest Apostle, and there are suggestions that she eventually moved to Ephesus, where there was a new Christian community. There is a house there that is purported to be that of Mary. But that isn't in the New Testament, either, even though Paul writes to the Ephesians several times.

I choose to believe that it is tradition, passed down through the teachings of the Apostles, and later their disciples. You may not believe it, but I don't know of any evidence that it isn't true.

"When we die, our bodies cease to be "us," as our souls separate from our bodies. Then the body becomes worm food. It's a simple fact of nature."

Please show me anywhere in the Bible where a dead person's body "ceases to be us." The spirit separates from the body yes...but the body still belongs to that individual. This is why throughout the bible, burial is honored (explicitly starting with Abraham), and bodies are not just cast off as food for ravens.

Christianity has never taught that a human body is irrelevant...mainly due to the resurrection. Christianity has also never taught though, that should the body be lost...due to decomposition, or explosion, cremation or whatever that they won't be resurrected. God the Creator would have no problem reconstituting the dust or ashes we become into a new body--of the same type of Jesus's after His resurrection.

At the same time however, until the 20th Century, there has been no tradition of cremation, (originally a pagan practice, by those who devalued the body) as the body, even dead, does matter...and is understood as being resurrected some day.

The problem is that some of the teachings about Mary actually contradict the Bible.

The Bible teaches that all humans are sinners. I don't think the apostles would have passed on by word of mouth the doctrine of the so-called immaculate conception since it so dramatically contradicts their writings in the New Testament which emphasize over and over that all men sin. Why would anyone believe anything they had to say if they contradicted themselves in that way? This is why Protestants can't believe the doctrine...not so much that it is based on supposed verbal tradition, but that it is overtly against the apostles' Biblical writings.

For example, why would John in Ephesus write in his epistle in 1 John 1:10 that "if we claim we have not sinned we make him out to be a liar..." if there was actually one who was living or had lived among them in Ephesus (Mary) who supposedly had not sinned?

Or why would Paul write, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" if he knew Mary was not a sinner? In order to make that not a falsehood he would have had to have added "for all have sinned except Mary". Paul especially says over and over and over again that all of humankind except Christ is in a lost condition because of sin. I take him at his word.

It's scary when people choose to believe man made blather rather than the plain spoken words of Jesus or the Apostles. I guess that's why some groups didn't want their people to read the scripture for themselves, else uneducated rubes like us might say 'Hey! That's not what it says..." Ping to #157.

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